Monday, July 18, 2005

I never thought I'd say this...

but someone has to stand up for the CIA. I remember the early 70's well when people who didn't like the government were exposing intelligence agents, but I never expected that their own bosses would turn on them for political gain.

If you don't count the gigantic blunders and incompetence that allowed the September 11th attacks to occur, there have been 3 major intelligence failures caused by high level members of the Bush administration.

The first is one most people have forgotten . I've always been interested in codes and I grew up with stories about relatives who were in the Danish Underground in WWII. So when I heard that someone just got drunk and told Chalabi we could break Iranian codes, my jaw nearly hit the floor. This is the ultimate secret. We would have had a lot harder time winning WWII if we hadn't been able to break both the Japanese and German codes. If it's so damn hard to get human agents into Iran, we're doubly screwed if they change their codes.

I hope the administration doesn't go after the NSA next - they've probably broken the new codes by now. Guys - don't tell Rumsfeld. Please don't tell Rumsfeld. Tell him you found the messages on the subway, go on, he'll believe anything.

The second major screw up is outing Valerie Wilson. There are CIA agents that are openly working for the agency. They really do have desk jobs and no one cares if their name is published. Some CIA employees write scholarly papers and give talks. No problem. If Valerie Wilson was one of these people, she and her husband would have shrugged at Karl Rove telling reporters she worked for the agency. The CIA would not have requested prosecution.

Instead the CIA requested prosecution and the Wilsons are furious. I wonder how many overseas employees the front company she worked for had? Every one of those people is in danger.

The worst is that orange alert we had during the Democratic Convention. They actually exposed a double agent that the government of Pakistan was using to rope in suicide bombers in Britain. We all know how well that worked

Of course none of these can top the invasion of a country that did not and could not threaten us based on a pack of lies and naked greed.